Non ho dormito in questa notte mai

Non ho dormito in questa notte mai (I have not slept in this night never) explores the relationship between music and movement; this latter intended in both dramatic and spacial terms. The piece features an intense exchange between the violin and saxophone, which alternate instrumental playing and subtle theatrical gestures. At the same time, these two instruments implicitly stimulate an on-stage piano, whose pianist, however, is absent from the scene. The composition consequently develops a musico-dramatic movement that articulates on a triple level: between the on-stage performers, between these performers and the player-less piano, and between the visible on-stage action and the off-stage pianist.

Drawing from a number of textual and musical citations, as for instance Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea and Heiner Goebbels’ Schwarz auf Weiss, the piece celebrates the theme of absence. The triple musico-dramatic movement, in fact, wishes to suggest that an invisible character is omni-present within the musical performance - within any musical performance - and that it is music itself. In this composition, the entity that has metaphorically ‘not slept in this night never’ is the sound of music, which manifests itself independently from the player's presence, and that constitutes an invisible ontological entity of its own.